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I was a gifted child. Until I wasn't. I was the golden girl. Until I couldn't burn anymore.
My parents expected me to build wings of gold and fly further than anyone could ever try. I don't blame them, having a child to raise is like sculpting a clay ***, you can shape it the way you like, paint it the color you fancy. To raise a child is to play God. To raise a child is to be God.
But to be a child is to fall, to make mistakes, to fail. The thing about being too bright at an early age means you burn out by the time you're 16 and suddenly the world around you becomes more gray and terribly, terribly lonely. The fire is never warm enough, nothing is ever enough. And one day you find yourself begging to a godless sky, begging for a new spark.
 Jul 31 K E Cummins
Malcolm
What if the question
is older than the answer?
What if time forgets
why it moves,
and the stars
no longer know their names?
What if we speak,
but it is the silence between words
that holds the weight.
The road bends
not to mislead,
but to remind us:
truth is never linear.
A seed does not know
it is a tree.
The stone does not dream
of flight
yet both contain the sky.
I do not search
for meaning,
only the place
where meaning once slept.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
July 2025
Time forgets why
 Jul 30 K E Cummins
Elle
Doors
 Jul 30 K E Cummins
Elle
There's the exit door
Handle-less
 Jul 30 K E Cummins
LL
that's when I knew you're
good for me — I liked myself
more
for liking you
2025/111
in between the seam
of day

and evening
the entirety of the sky

and the november leaves
cinder in the same glow

the streets
and sidewalks are stained

with autumn impastos
in our arc

we wax
and wane

the many moons
our course permanently burnt

with the colors
of departure

and return
soon

in winter’s patient keep
we will close our eyes

and fill our dreams
with release
isn't it enough that the wind
makes tumbles of the umbrellas

that dark staccato notes of rain
strike with such force that we pause
  
our busy little lives and marvel at it?
isn't it enough that the very next moment

the sky turns so impossibly blue
that we remember we all have wings?
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